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Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Book Review: The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

This
is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York
when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She
came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated
into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set
of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and
never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as
she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage
the earth.

But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.

WARNING:
This review is dark and full of spoilers

Plea:

I’m drawn to
this book because of the cover. It’s very pretty and artsy, but probably doesn’t
have a lot (or any) symbolic meaning. But it caught my attention, so I guess it
worked. The story summary sounds interesting enough (I’m currently
binge-watching Doctor Who, so, “yay, time travel!”). The last line about
everything changing when Prenna falls for Ethan made me gag. My favorite books are
ones where romance is the sub-plot, not the entire story. If the romance is the
entire story, why bother with the time travel? Just to suck in fantasy readers like
me? But I’ll still read it. The book isn’t
very thick and the font is pretty big. It’ll be a quick read. And it’s by Ann
Brashares, author of The Sisterhood of
the Travelling Pants. I’ve only seen the movies, but she can’t be that bad
of a story teller if she has a bestseller under her belt. Can she…? We’ll see.

Evidence:

I didn’t like
the first half of this book. At all. It started with the prologue. Ethan, the
love interest, is fishing all by his lonesome when Prenna James appears in the
middle of the forest, butt-naked. Ethan describes her as “supernaturally
beautiful, like a mermaid or elvish princess”. So, basically, Prenna looks like
a blended version of Ariel from The
Little Mermaid and Arwen from Lord of
the Rings. When we meet Prenna later in the books, we see she’s a timid
girl with only a few friends. Egh. Beautiful, shy and friendless. Where have I
seen this before? Oh, yeah, in 50% of the YA books I’ve ever read. If Prenna’s
going to be a Mary Sue, we need her Gary Sue. And we find him in Ethan. He’s a
popular guy who’s friends with everyone, but he’s also a good-hearted, kind
person. I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Once you get
past their stereotypical characterization, Prenna and Ethan aren’t that bad. By
the end, Prenna isn’t making stupid decisions and Ethan becomes an actual
character. They’re tolerable. But it wasn’t just the flat characters that
bothered me in the first half. I think The
Here and Now needed a bit more editing. There are a few places where the
writing is choppy because Brashares didn’t use contractions. If she was trying
to make Prenna sound old-fashioned (which makes no sense since she’s from the future),
Brashares should have had every possible contraction removed instead of just a
few random assed one. There were also multiple occasions in the first half where
Prenna broke the fourth wall and started talking to the audience. They were
gone by the mid-point, but it was a huge distraction to be ripped out of the
book like that.

This book was
very predictable. When the homeless man, “Ben Kenobi”, asked to speak to Prenna
and started telling her she had to change the future, it was obvious the man
was her father. He was mentioned so often, anyone reading would’ve known he was
going to show up any second. On a site note, Prenna said she had great
deductions skills, but she was in denial about “Kenobi” being her father even
after she had solid proof. I guess Brashares could defend herself by saying
Prenna didn’t want to believe he was her father. I’ll accept that, but it’s
kind of weak. Moving back to the predictability of the story, I guessed Ethan
was the important one Prenna had to save and not Mona, whom they spent the
entire story trying to save. While my guess was never 100% confirmed, it was
validated by Prenna stopping his death and the revelation of his potential
future as a great scientist.

The second
half of the story was better. There was more time than I wanted focused on the
romance. They ate a lot of meals, shared secrets and played cards. The good
part came when they actually got around to saving the future. The ending was
strong enough that I’d read a sequel to find out what happens to Prenna, Ethan
and the whole time travelling community.

Random
Thought:

-This book is
going to date itself real quick. The first chapter is titled April 23, 2014. I understand
why they needed dates. It’s a time travel novel. But I feel they could’ve kept
the future dates and found a way to work around the current dates. Anyone reading
this book in a year will find it “old” just because the events happened in
2014.

Verdict:

Despite the
weak writing, poor characterization and predictable plot at the beginning, The Here and Now wasn’t a complete waste
of time. The end of the story, and how it unfolded, was interesting and kept my
attention. But to get to the good parts, you have to wade through all the bad.
I think the starts of The Here and Now deserves
2 stars. But the end gets four starts. So I’ll average it out to 3 stars.

About Me

I'm a Canadian author seeking representation for my speculative fiction. I love fantasy and sci-fi, along with anything else make believe or magical. To learn more, check out my website, my Pinterest board, or this interview!

Disclaimer

I read and review books because I love to. I do not receive payment from the publishers or authors. All reviews are my own thoughts and opinions. All book covers and author photos are taken from Goodreads.com unless otherwise noted.